expert text needed for ffh manual

davidlallen

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I am a beginner with FFH and I learned everything I know so far from xienwolf's excellent manual in this thread. But, its strategy sections for each civ are slightly out of date and IMHO often miss key information needed for beginners. Intermediate level players can perfectly well search the forums and weed out obsolete or expert level information, but beginners like myself will benefit from knowing a few key pieces of information.

As a completely beginning Grigori player, for example, I was unable to figure out how to use adventurers. I used them to explore and they got killed.

If you are an expert in one particular civ, and you still remember what are the key points for *beginners* to know about that civ, could you please write 2-3 paragraphs of information so that a beginner won't get frustrated by "missing the point" of the new civ?

Please put the civ name into the subject line as the following example shows.
 
Strategy: The Grigori are the only civilization that can recruit the powerful Adventurer unit. The Adventurer is a Great Person and Hero that can be upgraded into almost any human unit. The Grigori use these customizable Heroes as elite warriors, and they can grow into some of the best units in the game.

Treasure your Adventurers! They are the units with the most potential in the game. In the early game, your adventurers are too weak to explore safely. Save up some gold before the first one appears, so you can immediately upgrade it to a warrior or scout. Then keep promoting it until it has enough useful promotions. Your first warrior adventurers can conquer cities almost single-handedly with Combat III and Shock. Later in the game, you can upgrade new adventurers to mounted units or adepts, depending on which tech branch you choose.

To get the most Adventurers you should avoid early wonders in your Capital - though you can also gamble and trust that the increased amount of GPP will compensate for a lower probability to spawn Adventurers. The Adventurer's Guild will boost your Great People production, which can be further increased by adopting Pacifism. Later on the Grigori Tavern also boosts your Adventurers. The Grigori World Spell, Ardor, resets the Great People counter, making it easy to acquire a large number of Great People very quickly in the later stages of the game.
 
Warriors for hire, the swift moving Hippus have fought for, and against, every nation at one time or another. They are equally happy partnered with orcs as they are with men as long as they get paid.

Strategy: The Hippus start with Horses and all of their mounted units are upgraded by the Ranches to be Horselords, giving them an amazingly mobile army. After getting a basic economy, your first goal should be to reach Horseback Riding, build Ranches, and start turning out Horsemen.

When fighting your enemies, use the heightened movement of your troops. Pillage every scrap of land in your considerable reach. Attack the enemy and then retreat out of range from any decent chance of a counterattack. Amass your troops just outside the sight range of your next victim and hit him with alarming numbers before he can react. Never forget that your only weakness is a lack of defensive bonuses, so if you do not hit first, you will not likely get a chance at all.

Rather than spending time researching technology and constructing a fighting force in the normal manner, the Hippus can gain much benefit from focusing on founding the Guild of the Nine, then utilizing raw wealth to bend the world to their whim. Aim for the currency technology. This will found a Guild of Nine in one of your cities. Spend gold to hire one mercenary there, and send the mercenary along with your attack force. When you capture a distant city, use the mercenary to found a new branch of the Guild. Then spend gold to hire more mercenaries there. This will give you a new fighting force on the spot.

The main weakness the Hippus have is cracking well defended cities. You can pillage everything outside, but what if the defenders won't come out to play? It's tempting to make your fast force even faster with mobility promotions, but cover will help more against these targets. You may want to build up from your starting air mana and field mages with maelstrom; haste will help them keep up with the horsemen.

Later in the game, you can build a more effective fighting force with Magnadine, your Hero. The Ride of Nine Kings wonder is great for your production city since it lets you start your units with 10 XP! Gold may be more important than technology to keep your ranks full with mercenaries.
 
If you like to concentrate on a relatively small number of cities with which to build massive forces to crush your enemies, you'll love the Khazad. The Khazad are economic powerhouses... but only if you keep their current Gold high. In the early game, your objective should be to always have at least 100 gold per city, and attempting to get more. By the mid (and in the late game) you should almost never sink below 500 gold per city. Keeping gold improves the Dwarven Vault in each of your cities, and increases happiness, production and great people.

The easiest religion to go for is the Runes of Kilmorph. The reason is that this religion alone (particularly with the shrine (Tablets of Bambur), but even without) can dramatically improve your economics. Make sure to spread Runes of Kilmorph to each of your cities, and consider spreading it to other's cities, particuarly if you have (or plan to get) the Tablets of Bambur.

Technology should be split between economics and military; the amount you devote to economics should vary on your economic problems (if any). The easiest military line to concentrate on is the melee one, largely because it's also the line for the metals, which help improve the Dwarven Forges, further improving your production.

However, if you're lacking metal, and either chose against Runes of Kilmorph or were beaten to the Mines of Gal-dur, consider the mounted and recon lines. The mounted lines have some powerful units, if one is slow, and the recon line is different from other recon lines, but still can be effective, particuarly if you're Neutral for the offensive Dwarven Druids.

Avoid the Archery and Arcane lines, but make certain that you use Trebuchets as support units - they are some of the best siege weapons in the game.

Note that most of your units will be Dwarven. This gives bonuses, particuarly the hills movement bonus, and the worker bonus makes your workers the second fastest in the game.

From my first attempt:
Spoiler :
The Khazad are economic powerhouses... but only if you keep their current Gold high. In the early game, your objective should be to always have at least 100 gold per city, and attempting to get more. By the mid (and in the late game) you should almost never sink below 500 gold per city.

Dwarven Vaults
A basic chart of Dwarven vaults. All modifications are per city, and are updated at the beginning of the turn:
  • < 50 gold per city : Empty (-2 happiness)
  • < 100 gold/city: Low (-1 happiness)
  • < 150 gold/city: (no change)
  • < 200 gold/city: Stocked (+1 Happiness)
  • < 300 gold/city: Abundant(+2 Happiness, +10% production)
  • < 500 gold/city: Full(+2 Happiness, +25% production)
  • >= 500 gold/city: Overflowing(+3 Happiness, +40% production, +25% great people)

Religion
Like all non-atheists, religion is important for the Khazad. Considering that they are best played with fewer, stronger cities, a religion is more important than some other civilizations. While there are arguments for a number of religions for the Khazad, the easiest one to start with is the Runes of Kilmorph. The gold production from this religion and its temples (and ideally its shrine, should you conquer it or get the technology first) is very nice, given the amount of gold you'll want to just keep your vaults overflowing.

Technology
Your technology choices are dependent on your strategy (of course), but something to try is the following. Note that unlike most other civilizations, maxing out research is generally a bad idea until you're at 500+ gold/city (remember to include any settlers you plan to build in that number):
1) Focus on research enough to speed up your early research. Education and/or Ancient Chants are key.
2) Go for Runes of Kilmorph.
3) consider each of the following branches:
3.1) Melee (this is probably the easiest, as the Dwarven Forge givens production bonuses based on metals obtainable from this line, and Maros is along this line).
3.2) Economic (this is probably the second easiest)
3.3) Siege/gunpowder (the catapult replacement is wonderful)
3.4) Mounted
3.5) Arete (The iron bonus from the wonder alone here is very nice)
Most importantly, ignore the Archery and Recon lines, unless you're pretty certain of what you're doing. Always ignore the Arcane line.


Strategy
There are two main easy Dwarven strategies I'm aware of: Economic powerhouse (where you concentrate on your economy and mostly use mercenaries (via Currency/Guild of the Nine) as your military force), and a more traditional conquest-type strategy. In either case, consider going for Trebuchets when you want to take out cities or large stacks - they are some of the best siege weapons in the game, combining the high withdrawal with good strength, bombardment (25%), and collateral (100/70/6). Note that they will need to be backed up by other units, as they cannot kill units by themselves (a unit they defeat will be at 25% HP).

The other units of note are:
  1. Dwarven Shadow (causes collateral damage)
  2. Dwarven Cannon (stronger than a normal cannon - note, however, that their withdrawal is not as high as a Trebuchet's.
  3. Dwarven Druid (Earth magic instead of Nature magic makes for a better combat support caster, but no vitalization).
  4. Dwarven Horngaurd (stronger, slower Knight)
  5. Dwarven Slinger (an Archer with worse upgrade capabilities)
  6. Myconid (a Beastmaster, with disadvantages but also with the powerful Spores spell).
  7. Maros (the national Hero, fairly good at offense, but wonderful at defense).

Note that the vast majority of your units will likely be Dwarven. This doubles movement in hills, given 25% poison resistance, and increases work rates by 25%.

Let me know if you'd like alterations. As a side-note, should this be in the Strategy forum?

As another side-note, I'd suggest adding the Grigori are Atheists. Considering how major religion is for many strategies, this is a pretty important fact.
 
I find that going recon with dwarves can be very strong, as the DD and Myconid combo is quite powerful. The Myconids can entangle the stack and the DD can crush without fear of counterattack.
 
The Khazad are economic powerhouses... but only if you keep their current Gold high. [...] Let me know if you'd like alterations. As a side-note, should this be in the Strategy forum?

Thanks! The goal of this particular thread is to get "how to get started" information into the manual for first-time players. Is it possible to rewrite in a more conversational style, rather than sections and lists? The information is good (I've never played Khazad and it got me interested ...) but the existing civ sections are written as though you were telling your buddy how to get started. "Hey, you've played Civ IV, let me show you this cool add-on, here's how you do it!".

I think/hope more people read this forum than the strat sub-forum, and there is an active thread about the manual in the strat sub-forum. So this way we are covering more bases.

As another side-note, I'd suggest adding the Grigori are Atheists. Considering how major religion is for many strategies, this is a pretty important fact.

Good point, that is one of the reasons they are good for starting players.
 
Thanks! The goal of this particular thread is to get "how to get started" information into the manual for first-time players. Is it possible to rewrite in a more conversational style, rather than sections and lists?

See if you like my second attempt better.
 
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